If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I'm interested if anyone has tried a 30 frame horzonal hive to be used as an unlimited brood and food chamber. Will the queen lay her eggs all through out the 30 frames, or will she keep closer to the entrance. I'm planning on using a fowler bd to expand the chamber as is needed. Then put supers on top for honey using queen excluders. What do you think? Darrell

I have built a 44 frame horizontal hive, but have not put bees in that one yet. I will this spring. I do have a hive with a double wide box, of 22 frames of 4.9mm foundation with a queen in it. This is actually amost as many cells as 30 frames of 5.4mm cells. The bees were settling in when the queen was winding down on laying, so it's difficult to say for sure. However it appeared to me the bees were communicating quite well and the queen was not adverse to laying whereever she found room to do so, but the main nest was toward the front.

I have a question for you about unlimited brood management. Can I use smaller boxes such as medium supers or even shallow supers to put my brood in? I have just found out I can't lift any heavy weights any more and I don't want to quit my bee hobby.

Can I use smaller boxes such as medium supers or even shallow supers to put my brood in? I have just found out I can't lift any heavy weights any more and I don't want to quit my bee hobby.

reply:

Yes. You can use any size box you want. But it is best to pick one size so all frames are universal and can be manipulated between any box. Don't think in terms of boxes for unlimited broodnest. Think of what is going on in those boxes, the bees themselves and how how one can manage the queens to have more than enough room for brooding. The size of box really means nothing. The goal is to have max. room and more than enough winter stores. So with that said use any size box you want it is the principle of the management (being practiced) that counts not the equipment. Remember it is best to keep bees and not boxes.

I was also on the brink of quitting beekeeping because of all the lifting and instead designed a more horizontal system. Here's some pictures of what I built in case you are interested. It's not complicated and takes any standard size boxes you like. I use it with deep frames and top bars but any size box could be used. Since it is horizontal you never have to lift from any position except the one height you build the table to. You can use standard boxes of any depth and any nonstandard width such as the 8 frame boxes or 5 frame nuc boxes.

The other hive design (It's the last picture) is just a long trough hive that takes deep frames. You never have to lift a box, you just lift frames. Take a look. For more detail click on any of the pictures.http://www.beesource.com/eob/althive/bush/index.htm

I have rasied bees on different depth boxes and if you want to raise them on shallow boxes that can be done. The queen may not lay such nice solid brood, but the bees don't care that much one way or the other. My problem is then you're stacking at least four of them for the brood chamber and searching the whole brood chamber still requires moving every box. Brushy Mountain has everything you could want for 8 frame medium depth hives. An 8 frame medium box is very light compared to 10 deep frames. You could use these in the traditional configuration or you could combine these with the long table design I use and never have to lift anything unless you're robbing supers and then it's only 8 frames of medium. I also build half width deep boxes for supers. These hold four deep frames. You can put two of them side by side on a standard 10 frame Lanstroth.

Thanks for your reply, I have a lot of medium supers but since I just started this last year I don't have any frames with comb in them. I can see if I am going to continue with this hobby I have a lot of work to do this year. I like your idea of the long hives and I might try something like that. The pictures were great!!